I decided that I’d re-run a couple of my early on posts that probably nobody ever got a chance to read.

This post was originally posted on January 21, 2010.

Graffiti on the trees

This morning as I was taking my dogs for a romp through a local wooded area, I passed by some trees that had graffiti spray painted on them. This is not a new occurence, but it has been quite a while since the last ones were done. This latest one must have been done within the last couple of days because I frequently take my dogs there.

At any rate, the fact that there is graffiti on a tree is offensive enough to start with. Why do these brats want to ruin the place they hang out? What is more offensive (which I’m sure that is their purpose) is the words or sometimes pictures they put there. A few years ago, someone thought it funny to spray paint pictures of male genitalia on the road and to spew the F-bomb on trees and street signs.

I guess I’m just an old fuddy duddy who doesn’t understand, because it is beyond me why it is that kids like that will spend their life pissin’ and moanin’ about their crappy life and the crappy place they live, but then turn right around and turn a perfectly decent place to live into the crap that they complain about!

I am always offended by this brand of graffiti in our neighborhood, especially when it interferes with the little bit of nature that we might get to experience around here, but today I found myself feeling yet another dimension of my disgust for it. The first tree I walked by said “so-and-so is a fagit”. (Brilliant! Don’t you just love it when an idiot can’t even spell their own insults!) Anyway, it bothered me that a person’s name was painted there, unable to be erased for a very long time. I felt bad for the person. But then I passed by the second tree and I had to double back and look at it, because the first and last name were painted on this one and the first name was my son’s name! I was relieved to see that it was not our last name! And the actual insult was very difficult to make out what it said, but all the same, I had a moment of panic before I was able to determine it wasn’t my son they were targeting. I often dread that my kids will become targets of bullying or something worse. I don’t know if my fears are unfounded, because it seems like every kid gets bullied in some way at some point during their school years. At what point does it become something we should worry about as parents? And how do you find it out? Kids are very tight-lipped about these things, no matter how much you reassure them that they can come to you about their problems.

So, even though it turned out not to be my kid’s name on that tree, I feel bad for that kid and for his parents. And I sit and worry that next time, it might be my kid that’s the target.

I would like to remove the spray paint from the tree, if anyone knows how it could be done.

4 Responses to Graffiti on the trees (for Re-run Sunday)

Strangely enough, that was kind of one the suggestions on one of the websites. There’s some kind of paint out there that’s used for spraying a cut limb to seal it up (I think).
A lot of it has worn down now…a lot faster than I thought it would.